Album review. Click play to listen

MAY 2020 → In 1904 Béla Bartók experienced an epiphany when he heard 18-year-old Lidi Dósa singing songs from her Transylvanian village. Between 1908 and 1917 Bartók would go on to record & transcribe over 3,400 peasant folk songs, describing the completion of his research into Romanian folk music as “my life’s goal”. The Béla Bartók Field Recordings represent still to this day the biggest collection of Romanian folk songs from Transylvania. A century later, three outstanding improvisers Mat Maneri, Lucian Ban and John Surman draw fresh inspiration from the music that fired Bartók’s imagination,looking again at carols, lamentations, love songs, dowry songs and more. TRANSYLVANIAN FOLK SONGS was released May 15 on Sunnyside Records to critical acclaim with features on NPR, Financial Times, The Wire, Jazztrail, Jazziz , etc.

Get the album here: